8.6.2024 Redevelopment Authority

okay welcome to the August 6 2024 meeting of the Fall River Redevelopment Authority uh pursuing through the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recording and transmission are being made whether perceived or UNP perceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and

permissible roll call John Erikson cono Ron R John mad thank you also attending Sarah page executive director John Coughlin legal council Kenny fola administrative consultant and Karen Martin project manager uh first item is approval of our Open Session minutes from June 26th motion to approve second second John ER yes yes Ron R yes M yes and yes thank you uh the August warrant that you folks

have is for total 22,8 5885 any questions on that if not entertain a motion to approve motion approve the August warrant of $2,858 85 second second John yes Lis gonz yes Ron ran yes John madus yes thank you yes thank you uh Karen's going to speak about 2501 South Main uh 251 South Main um at the end of July we received um a a check from the school department which paid off the remainder

of the uh uh lease amount for the for the term of the lease and um the one thing that to not that was included in that was a a double payment of an invoice and so I have a check tonight that I'm going to ask that you sign so that we can reimburse it's just for $3,244 um and I'll put it on the next warrant but if we could sign it tonight

they just double pay an invoice but they are paid through the term of their lease now so just thought i' let you know that good um Karen you want to give us an update on the uh FY 2023 audit uh yes the FY 2023 audit is like we're probably more than halfway through with all the the the data and the back and forth with the um the Auditors I know Joan you spoke

with them I've spoken with them Sarah still needs to speak with Kelsey and then um we're just responding to some final questions and then we'll be hope y wrapping it up um by the end of this week we'll get all the responses into them and then we're just waiting to get actually I'm hoping that that should be imminently coming is the um the audit of the um pension the pension board's um

fiscal year numbers so that gets um rolled into our um audit too and then hopefully we'll get things wrapped up with that by the end of this month so we should get hopefully aort by then right so we are chugging along with that nice um uh Norton City Pier operations okay so things are things are actually the the peers looking really good if I do say so um we did get the

posts in for the fire extinguishers on the dock and those um have been installed and the fire extinguishers themselves have been mounted on those new post looks actually pretty sharp um so now we won't have any issues with the tide it can go as high or low as it wants not to impact the fire extinguishers um the next big event out there this month we have um females in action doing um two days they do um

Saturday mornings and Wednesday evenings different exercise classes out there and um and then the Narrows concert as their big event on August 24th um I met with Patrick out there uh La beginning beginning of last week and just went through some logistic stuff they are definitely having a bigger stage the bigger name bands and I'm really hoping for a larger crowd and they're actually

also having a um I guess arts and crafts fendors um on the south pier and then you know um there'll be food trucks and um I think beer tent and a um liquor tent so um he's really looking forward to a um a large turnout this year so and that's the 24th Saturday the 24th and then Friday the 23rd we have um um the last uh Food Truck Friday nights they've

um the two that we've had so far have gone over well the first one was probably more steadily attended than the second one but all the trucks seem to um sell out so that's good so I think maybe over the four hours it might be a little too long we might shorten the time frame next year I don't know we're going to we're going to think about that some but um so that's they've gone they've been

fairly well received so the trucks actually run out of food yeah they've sold out everything that they at the very end very but they're happy yeah good do you have entertainment at those no no we didn't we weren't sure how they and you know we could that's the thing that we need to probably regroup and see if we're going to have um entertainment or not next year and if we're going to continue to do

it the other challenge that we have with those is that when the city has had big events and had food trucks they've brought tables and chairs and put them out on um the pavement on the driveway and when we're doing it with just these food trucks people are having to sit on curbs or they bring their own chairs and some have brought whole families and you know blankets and things but a lot of

people are kind of sitting on grass or curbs and you know that's not ideal and it there's not an easy answer for it you know we've talked about do we need to add tables the city did you ask the city to bring the tables out more often yeah yeah I think it's a really big hassle for them and staff time I would I think it's an important component of the overall Waterfront experience I think

speaking to the mayor they' probably be a great I can't speak on behalf of them but I would think they'd be maybe agreeable okay was they may Char something for it but I think that it's an avenity we should have and if the city has the equipment y I think that's the most logical route to go yeah I think we were going to regroup as to you know do we want to do we want to bring

out the entertainment do we want to do the chairs and tables next year and things like that so I think that um this was just to see if there was going be any interest right the other thing sh to will probably be parking CU I don't know if we'll get that lot also that'll be another concern so and then find how expensive they are there's there's companies that I remember I used to have

a potty at my house that have 100 200 people there and we'd get tables and chairs the chairs were like $5 for two days and the even if you have 100 chairs it's only 500 and then tables like $10 each if you have 10 tables it's really not that expensive it's only a few hundred and you got to store them though no no they they come back and they pick

them up at the same day the day after yeah so that's the problem is how do we secure them in that but we've had that we've had chairs and tables left a few times and never anything touched we chain them when the city does it yeah we chain them and lock them okay and then they have the it's their chain and lock so they have the key to it that's what

they do so um we would have to they do it right around the well you see if it's if it's 4 to8 they may come back up the same night yeah I mean we'd have to look yeah that's what that's all the stuff we're going to like hammer out details and see what we want to do for next year so especially if somebody you hire them three or four times they may be very interested in that

mhm absolutely so that kind of raises the question of earlier this year we talked about the fact that the city has been picking up the cost of entertainment and really the cost of the events and using their um event planner and so we really had made the point that we weren't in the business of you know paying for bans and paying for a lot of things to have events on CD

Pier that that wasn't a role that the Redevelopment Authority wanted to play sounds as though people are revisiting that and so we may really want to have a conversation about that because that's been our sense of our marching orders was that if the city was doing it great but that we weren't trying to extend ourselves in that way let's try to get them to do as much as they can and then

we'll take out we'll talk about the rest of it I think that what we are going to get faced with is people who want to rent City here for events and that's the thing that we are going to have to address because we own it I know so that that really needs to be something that we start to think about yeah did we did we get a couple request yeah we've got a

couple we've got a couple but you know our event committee that you're on had said before we have really gotten our feet wet having events there we shouldn't try to be renting to weddings and getting into all of that and you're talking about needing somebody who's you know I don't think Karen and I feel like we can become event managers as well and you know what what works with the city is they have a full-time

event planner and she really man manages the events if we're going to get into weddings and things we have to figure out who's going to interact with you know or even Civic organizations who's going to interact with them who's going to do you know all of the planning process couldn't we sub out the same person that's doing it for the city and just and just charge them we want so

much for them to rent the space and then they they make the rest of money on the rest of the deal let them run it not us run it I don't want you guys to run it that's not my goal full time with the city right so but wouldn't we use her why would we use samanth right yeah I just don't know if her if she's got the time to take on more events I don't know

well I mean I just think that a wedding over there would be amazing I just don't know how that would work you know what I mean taking up time from the public but it would be a nice maybe investigate event planners and maybe have a list with two or three that we feel very comfortable with and would feel okay with having them running the B here so I think these are things we need to

probably investigate over the winter so we have a game plan sounds good there's probably companies that do that for a living and let them we just get paid a little slice of the pie but we have no liabilities we have to make sure that we're held no but that you definitely rent that for a lot of money yeah you know what I mean doesn't Peak do that in Newport thatou oh they rent T they they

rent tension they might do events though they might do it there's plenty of event planets around I I have to tell you guys I sat out at City Pier Saturday morning and it was just magnificent and everything looks so beautiful right now just it was very a very humbling moment to sit there and see what it has become compared to one of that and gratifying isn't it exciting

to be out there and think oh this was a sand we did the whole walk from the carousel down to thing me and my with went back we did the whole here that adds quite a bit of a walk on to the it's probably another quar mile added onto the walk uh three miles thir third3 miles on it yeah cuz I think it was 1.25 each way if I remember right so if you

do it twice you know that's 3 miles now from the from the carousel down to there yeah oh I'm glad you got to do that yeah it was nice you know what I was wondering too I mean I don't know um if they have over there but if we had a you know the little box with like doggy bags they're there they're on they're all TI up there already okay I walked down there I seen

like six of them in different areas locations earlier this year I didn't see any yeah there's one post right like in the middle of the halfway around the circular drive it's got a box on it with two holes there was no graffiti there was no dirty poops on any of the drive the whole walkway there was no fish guts there was nothing it was just it looked nice it was very clean and it was

actually people sitting on the dock with their feet in the water they were just sitting out there when we walked by nice um speaking of environmental close out oh um so uh just following up from last month um the concern from National Grid has been resolved um their installation is all above the um above the cap so if they ever needed to get access to their line they would not have

to do a soil mitigation plan Joker confirmed with the EPA that everything he's got in the aul um is uh worded fine and is okay as is and so he's going to wrap everything up and get it into um the state by the end of this month so that'll be the parment institution will be filed by the end of this month so we should be in good shape with that cathodic and then cathodic

protection so Catholic protection the is now known as RFP number 25-5 live it went out to the public on July 26th and um bids are due on August 29th and uh the idea would be we' bring to the September board meeting whoever we feel is the best um proposer and um look for board approval then um we had a pre-proposal site meeting today at 9:00 out of the site and we wrapped it all up

just before the rain started it was nice timing vendors what was that how many showed up there were three and they were three reliable vendors they were three legit um companies there 17 companies have pulled um the RFP of which you know there's a couple of marketing companies in there and so forth but there's probably a handful of legitimate um proposers on the list so hopefully we'll get um some good

proposals so looking forward to that um Northfield and Northfield point is is um chugging along Highland fence um did their work we put in the two new gates so that we can get access out there and then we blocked off the end so people can't just walk out there we have a padlock on the gate so um it's it's pretty secure right now the Topo survey was completed um and the test pits are

scheduled for a little bit later this month but he's hoping to get out there sooner I'm going to keep me posted on that and we're trying to schedule a meeting now um to over some initial um design just kind of where they're at um so hopefully by the next meeting we'll have um some some ideas to show so that's kind of chugging along um the next item um Sarah is going to talk

about the grant proposal requiring matching funds so I've been working on a proposal to um for a boating infrastructure Grant um from the uh fish and wildlife of Massachusetts that goes into a Federal grant program and um we're applying uh what we've come up with working with them is to apply for $300,000 which would require a $100,000 match and part of why I ended up with this grant program is that Ellen Sabula

at the seaport Economic Council the last time I talked with her about the grant that we have now she had said well you know she understands we'll be coming to them for a grant to implement the design work that they're funding us to do now and she said you know you can go to this boting infrastructure program and get funds for some of the things that we're designing and it was kind of clear that

she was saying instead of coming back to the seaport Council for things you really should go to this other source which makes sense so I'm applying for um a dingy the development of a dinghy Dock and some of the moing fields and the more I got into it the more complicated it got um and I'll just give you a few of the details basically this grant is designed to support vessels that are at

least 26 ft long and are presumably traveling up and down the Eastern Seaboard and need places to stop to spend a couple of nights or up to 15 days is what the grant expects and um you need to be able to show that they can get groceries and Provisions within a reasonable distance from your moing area and um you really have to describe why there's a need for this and what people what brings people

to your city so I talked about the fact that with Route 79 coming down and all that development there's just going to be so much more to draw people to but we have a long list of the things that people can come to now and so I've been working Along on that and I at first thought we were just applying for the dingy dock but it turns out um one other piece is that you have to

justify asking to build a dinghy dock with showing that you have enough dinghy you have enough Mings to use the dingy Dock and so um so we don't yet have the moing fields that would use it but you can't build moing Fields without having a dingy dock so um so what we've come up with is that we could if we apply for 300,000 and we match it with the 25% required of 100,000 we could construct

both the dingy Dock and install 18 Moorings and the moing fields are being designed by um beta and gei who's working with them on it and um I at first thought that we were going to ask for less and ask for slightly less of a match but I'm hoping that the board will um agree to fund this $100,000 so that we can really push forward on the moing field and the dingy

dock so is it is it 25% of the 300 yeah that would only be 75,000 that's only 75,000 yeah you're doing 33% you do 100 yeah they're thinking is it a third they're thinking out of 4 400,000 would be 25 yeah they were thinking I would have to do if it was 400,000 then it would be 100,000 the thing okay that's kind of where we're going we're saying we need 400,000 300,000 is the dingy Dock and

,000 is the mornings and so that's a $400,000 Pro proposal $100,000 of which we would need to fund so so I'll entertain a motion to approve matching funds of up to $100,000 in order to apply for the big which stands for boating infrastructure Grant y Federal grant for the new dingy dock at Norton City Pier okay so moved second yes yes Ron R yes madas yes thank you next item is Pleasant Street Flint so

um the big project related to this over the last month was preparing for and having a public open house with meepa so meepa got back to us after having submitted um all of the documentation that we needed to apply for our meepa certificate and they contacted us and said oh in a couple of weeks why don't we do this virtual meeting and so Karen had to jump to get interpreters which we

didn't actually need but she had them all lined up and um only two people came to this virtual meeting which was someone uh we work with Sam Haynes from the coastal zone management and he was asking questions and uh because there's no um Coast involved in the Flint neighborhood I don't think that he he felt like he needed to do much but he's really interested in engaging in Fall River so

I that's why I think he was on and state agencies that are working with you are supposed to kind of come to this potentially and so the other person who came was from our regional planning agency surad and he was asking about um transportation and how we were dealing with Transportation issues and the meepa person asked a of questions and they were all answerable um tyan Bond who had

submitted the meepa um documents for us did a nice little presentation we worked on a PowerPoint with them so that went well and we just got the meepa certificate yesterday and it's super long and none of us have looked at it yet and I'm going to send it to you and we're setting up a meeting with our Consultants next Thursday for an hour to go through it after they've really analyzed it and figure out what they're

saying we need to do for the um eir which is the environmental impact report which we now will have to do and so we'll see what what that in involves and we typically would have a um little team meeting tomorrow night at 4 o'clock but we decided to cancel it because we don't have anything to report and we need to spend hours analyzing all this before we're really ready to discuss it so um

if it seems important to discuss we may set up another meeting if we're being asked to do impossible amounts of more paperwork and Analysis and things we're going to want to talk about about that and figure out how we deal with it um but hopefully that isn't the case any questions about that no you want to talk about Deval Street community outreach yeah so so we thought we were having our first real public

meeting with the community next Thursday and we're all set to advertise it and you sent an email today that I haven't talked with you about yeah so I I think the question is in sorry for the late email um do we want to brief the council in a legislative delegation before it goes to a public meeting so we had thought we were going to brief the delegation back in July and we made many overtures to

senator rodrix who when I met with him a few weeks ago said oh when the budget's over I'll be willing to call a meeting of the delegation sometime in August and so um we know that's coming um I also thought that we didn't think we needed to brief the city councilors before we did this but that we were going to commit to offer them to have private sessions with a few of them

at a time yeah I I think it's just a matter of whatever you perceive the proper protocol to make yeah I don't think there's a you know people may get mad that they're briefed after the fact but if we're already scheduled for next week then maybe we should just STI or try to get maybe the delegation between now and next week or the city council we probably not going to I mean we have

plenty of time don't we if seems like we wouldn't have to rush well I feel like we're a month and a half behind in having an Outreach meeting I mean maybe not it's that bad but you know we we've been planning and planning and we're getting far along and we haven't opened it up to the public yet and um so Ken you had known we were planning it for next week right but yeah

then I forget that we haven't briefed the other parties yet right yeah I didn't think we thought we needed to brief City councilors separately that we were going to invite them and tell you know invite them to have special meetings with us what if we ask them to go hour before that meeting we meet with them first and then we bring it to the public this way at least you're offer it to

them it's all about yeah I think it's all about scheduling right yeah now the delegation is a little more difficult we were trying the whole strategy that everyone agreed to was that we should ask senator rodri to kind of um be the facilitator of it and he's now agreed to do that but we haven't had that yet so you know it on one level it wouldn't break my heart at all to not

have it next Thursday have more time to do Outreach and all of that but I also feel like we're you know we're supposed to be originally we planned to be done with this whole process in sep mber and it's it's complicated and it's lagging a bit and we know that we need toti I don't think it's the community briefings that holding it up no it isn't so I think I think we're probably going

to be we're going to have to Extended so it's not the committee briefings that's holding that up so maybe if we extend it by another week or so that gives us time to try at least convene these meetings prior to just as a courtesy to the elected officials yep I think that's a good idea I don't think we've been briefed enough no we haven't I don't think we've been

briefed enough as a a team here like I know I'm assuming that you met with people that were of the public you said you were meeting know a bunch of people that we had stakeholders meeting I have not heard about any stakeholders meeting yet I have not one email on it I'm not so I don't know what happened you're not part of it but would wouldn't we get briefed on it so we know if we going

fromont a public meeting i' like to know what happen behind closed doors right no I think but there's a there's an issue of open meeting law maybe you set up a couple of people to meet with Sarah just go over and myself and Karen as you know so that we can't have three we can have two two and one or whatever or can we do at a meeting all of us and two wow can

we do at a meeting with all of us public you have to just you have to announce that you're going to do it yes and then it becomes public yeah okay this is still a work in progress so what the purpose of these means is to take take everybody's input and comments yeah and then ultimately when the final plan is revealed it's inclusive of those comments so maybe set up briefings for the Redevelopment Authority members

between now and a couple weeks and do it that way stch have don't they already have a schedule of certain dates for the Outreach meetings just this upcoming one and scheduling with them is really difficult I thought there were several set up but I could how Market it well we were marketing it we had a flyer all set to go and a whole plan to get it out everywhere tomorrow

so also hasn't been brought out yet man no also nobody knows about it that so this is the time you're going to change it this is we're going to change it tonight is the time to do that y right so so it needs to you need to regroup on this y y Nobody seen this no I I just I just seen it in my one of my packages I

know I I looked at the thing so I was wondering if it's already been out there everybody no and we were redesigning that we thought that looked very drab and so this was the new one that's the new one mhm yeah what more colorful I like that one better than that this one's kind of we got plenty of time to decide now you got two weeks you two we feel like public

open house this is going onto bulletin boards all over town and you know that just seemed um that really came off of a PowerPoint slide that was the introduction to the PowerPoint and it's a very formal one but it's not really what you put in your little grocery store and try to invite people to come out if you put color on that just the way it's approached by says the Wall

Street car or a master plan you say public open house I'm thinking open house I walk right by exctly I I was just going to say the same thing I would flip that the color the color layout on there is looks like it's from Sesame Street yeah but I I was you should have seen the earlier versions that I got the waste of mocking people we need a graphic design an architect or something something that's

going to catch their attention so he can see it not working 12 to 14 hour days right what what's that architect that's not working 12 to 14 hour days well you know Stant is supposed to know how to do out we got a few weeks to figure it out so okay fine so are we going to get a date from Stan Tech and then we're going to go we'll get a new date backwards from

there I think there's going to be a briefing of the Revel that's the one you need right yeah I mean I don't mind if we get briefed with the city councilors and the at the same time I think everybody should be briefed separately yeah they have the same open meeting oh everybody's going to be briefed separately yeah no like cuz city council you can only maximum brief three at a

time say same laws apply okay but then you could you could have our folks there it's two separate two separate so you could have two of you yeah if you want to meet with the city council yeah that's yeah if I knew the master plan I'd be able to tell him I can't brief him on something I don't know yeah at the briefing yeah yeah she can have two of us oh yeah yeah okay and

not have to or about open meet and law right right okay it's just information session yeah uh if there's no no further matters for the Open Session chair makes a finding that open session would have a detrimental effect on negotiating position of the public body purpose of the executive session is to approve the executive session minutes from June 2624 discuss strategy with respective

potential real estate transactions for properties located at assessor map 22 lot 9 on Deval Street the corner of Turner Street 45 anaan Street and at the Deval Street corter related to the master plan I'll entertain a motion to enter into executive session and not return to open session motion to move the executive session second yes L yes Ron Rin yes madus yesk you thank you